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TIL that Joan of Arc was (technically) condemned to death for cross-dressing. The Church made her pledge to no longer wear men’s clothing, but her jailers only let her have men’s clothing to wear; breaking her pledge was defined as heresy, giving the Inquisition its excuse to burn her

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KY0AR TIL the story of William Tell shooting the apple on his son's head was punishment for refusing to submit to an official. Tell would be executed if he didn't hit the apple with a crossbow bolt. Tell drew two bolts, and hit it with his first shot. The second bolt was to kill the official if he missed!
RYL1 TIL Texas Instruments has a near monopoly on the graphing calculator field, with over 90% of the sales. Due to this the base model specs and price have not changed in 10 years.
EAxd TIL that the 1995 Bjork song “It’s Oh So Quiet” is a remake of an obscure B-side from 1951 — which itself was a remake of a French song from 1949 (“Tout est Tranquille”) — which itself was a remake of the original German song, “Und Jetzt ist es Still” from 1948. It’s a cover of a cover of a cover.
E1np7 TIL that because written Chinese uses characters to represent concepts rather than sounds, speakers of different languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese can communicate through writing, but not speech.
yKvp TIL that the compellingly challenging difficulty curve of Space Invaders (many slow enemies which become faster the fewer are left) wasn’t a design choice, but a hardware limitation. Furthermore, some historians attribute the runaway success of the game entirely to this single error.